Beaufort County Schools is imploring the North Carolina General Assembly to loosen the reins and let individual school districts have the power to amend the school calendar to fit their particular area.

By law, school districts must follow certain calendar guidelines: a minimum of 185 days or 1,025 instructional hours; a minimum of 10 annual vacation leave days; and the same number of legal holidays as state employees.

The mandated one-day holidays include New Year’s, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Good Friday, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and Veterans Day. The Thanksgiving holiday allows for at least two days, and the Christmas holiday allows for at least three.

At its regularly scheduled meeting Monday, the Beaufort County Board of Education discussed the progress on the 2016-2017 school calendar draft. Board members looked at the third revision at the meeting.

Superintendent Don Phipps said there were many issues for the board to take into consideration for the calendar, and this year’s draft has proven to be challenging because of where the dates are falling in conjunction with the guidelines.

Along with the required guidelines to follow, there are further limitations on a school calendar, including the total number of workdays, which must not exceed 195, an allotment of 42 consecutive days for summer break and no school on Sundays.

State law also mandates that schools cannot start instruction time earlier than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 and must end instruction time by the Friday closest to June 11. For the 2016-2017 calendar, this means Beaufort County students will not start school until Aug. 29, 2016 and can’t go past June 9, 2017.

Phipps said this timeline makes it more difficult to allot the correct number of days for annual leave days, workdays, the possibility of inclement weather and ample time for Christmas and spring breaks. The board may have to remove an instructional day just to accommodate the minimum of 10 annual leave days.

“This is the perfect storm, for lack of a better term,” Phipps said. “This is a difficult task. … It’s much harder this year because of the dates.”

The school board must also consider the end of grading periods, exams and the potential detriment of long stretches between breaks, Phipps said.

“Folks would like to have two weeks at Christmas, but there’s no way,” he said of the 2016-2017 calendar.

With more local control, the school board could tweak the start and end dates to fit all of the allotted dates more easily into the calendar, but as of now, the state has maintained its hold, Phipps said.

Board member Carolyn Walker asked at the meeting whether school districts can request for earlier starts, but Phipps said that option only applies to school districts that consistently have obstacles during the school year, including severe weather.

School board member Mike Isbell then asked who pushes for the calendar mandates.

“The tourism groups in North Carolina are worried about the summers being chopped and made shorter,” Phipps said in response. “This is the perfect opportunity to show what’s wrong.”

Both Isbell and chairman Terry Williams then suggested it was time for the public to contact lawmakers, as the state mandates affect thousands of residents, whether they are students, parents or educators, and commercial interests should not have such a pull on school policies.

Phipps also argued that with localized control, Beaufort County Schools could tailor the school calendar to better match with the colleges, thus easing the transition between public schools and secondary education.

“Again, the issue is we’re just asking for local control,” Phipps said.

The school board agreed that the dispute is about having the option to make only slight adjustments to the calendar — adjustments that would not involve big changes or a complete stray from state expectations.

Phipps said he thinks the county would be better off with this option, as it wouldn’t run into problems such as those encountered with the 2016-2017 school calendar.

“I just don’t think that this is representative government,” Isbell said in agreement. “This is a very important issue.”

The board is expected to present a calendar proposal in early February.

Beaufort County Schools is asking for feedback on the latest calendar revision. To view the draft, visit www.beaufort.k12.nc.us/domain/1605, select the “Board Docs” logo and then choose the date of Jan. 25, 2016 to access the meeting agenda and attachments.